OCTOBER 2005, NUMBER 35

WHY DO WOMEN CLAIM SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS SO EARLY?

BY ALICIA H. MUNNELL AND MAURICIO SOTO*

Introduction

If individuals continue to withdraw completely from This brief summarizes the incentives facing older the labor force in their early 60s, a large and growing women when claiming their Social Security benefits. number will be hard pressed to maintain an adequate The analysis shows that single women and married standard of living throughout retirement. Economic women face very different choices. For most married and demographic pressures are gradually eroding key women, the Social Security benefit structure actually sources of retirement income at the same time that encourages them to grab their benefits as soon as pos- increases in life expectancy mean that people can sible. These incentives reinforce the tendency for expect to live for 20 years, on average, after they stop wives, who are usually younger, to retire when their working. And averages do not tell the whole story. husbands do. Early claiming may maximize the wife's Nearly one third of women and almost one fifth of Social Security "wealth," but it also encourages them men will live into their 90s. to stop working, creating a loss of earnings and 401(k) savings and extending the period over which they need Women's low wages, interrupted work histories, and support in retirement. role as caregivers make them especially vulnerable in old age. A solution to the income security challenge, Early Claiming of Social Security with a potentially enormous payoff, is for women to Benefits work longer. One important benefit of continued employment — in addition to increasing current income, allowing additional 401(k) contributions, and The existence of Social Security's Earliest Eligibility postponing the drawdown of savings — is avoiding the Age (EEA) means that most Americans have an impor- actuarial reduction, or enjoying the actuarial increase, tant choice to make once they turn age 62: claim in Social Security benefits. One would think that the reduced Social Security benefits right away or delay 1 higher benefits are particularly important for women, until some further date and receive a larger benefit. who on average have much longer life expectancy. The reductions are approximately fair for the person Unfortunately, women, even more than men, tend to with average life expectancy. Monthly benefits are claim Social Security benefits as soon as they become lowered by an amount that offsets the longer period for which they will be received.2 available. The question is why?

* Alicia H. Munnell is the Peter F. Drucker Professor of Management Sciences in Boston College’s Carroll School of Management and Director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Mauricio Soto is a Senior Research Associate at the Center. The authors would like to thank Peter Diamond for helpful comments and Roberto Medina for explaining Social Security rules. The precise amount of the reduction for early retire- TABLE 2. MORE WOMEN THAN MEN CLAIM BENEFITS EARLY ment depends on when benefits are claimed relative to the "Normal Retirement Age” (NRA). The fact that Percent Distribution of Initial Social Security Benefit Awards the NRA is rising from 65 to 67 complicates the story. With an NRA of 65, a person who claimed benefits at Age Women Men age 62 received monthly benefits 20 percent lower than the full amount. The scheduled increase in the 62 58.6 53.3 NRA from age 65 to 67 raises the actuarial reduction 63 7.3 7.9 for claiming benefits at age 62 from 20 percent to 30 64 11.6 13.1 percent (see Table 1).3 At the same time, the Delayed 65 16.5 22.4 Retirement Credit, which has been increasing, now provides close to an actuarially fair adjustment for 66 and over 5.9 3.3 delaying retirement beyond the Normal Retirement Total 100.0 100.0 Age. Thus, on average, workers will receive the same lifetime benefits regardless of when they claim benefits Source: Authors’ calculations from the Social Security Annual between ages 62 and 70. In the following discussion, Statistical Supplement (2004). age 66 will be used as the Normal Retirement Age — the benchmark for full benefits. claiming the full benefit at age 66 and enjoying it over a longer life span.5 Thus, one would expect a smaller TABLE 1. SIZE OF MONTHLY CHECK DEPENDS ON WHEN percentage of women than men to claim benefits at age BENEFITS ARE CLAIMED 62 — just the opposite of the pattern shown in Table 2. Clearly other factors are at play. Benefits as a Percent of Worker’s Primary Insurance Amount

Age Workers Retirement at The Claiming Behavior of Single Women

62 65 66 67 70 One way to sort out the puzzle is to look at the retire- 62 in 1999 80.0 100.0 106.5 113.0 132.5 ment patterns of men and women by marital status. This information comes from the Health and 62 in 2005-2016 75.0 93.3 100.0 108.0 132.0 Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally representative 62 in 2022 70.0 86.7 93.3 100.0 124.0 survey of older Americans.6 Table 3 reports the distri- bution of claiming ages for workers who claimed Source: Authors’ calculations from the Social Security Trustees Social Security benefits between 1992 and 2002. Report (2005).

In 2003, 59 percent of women and 53 percent of men FIGURE 1. LONG-LIVED INDIVIDUALS RECEIVE GREATER opted to claim actuarially reduced benefits at age 62 LIFETIME BENEFITS BY DELAYING CLAIMING (see Table 2).4 The fact that a greater proportion of Present Discounted Value of Social Security Benefits for women than men claim benefits at this age is some- Different Life Expectancies* what surprising, since the women are expected to live longer than the men. A longer life expectancy means that women on average will receive benefits for an $200,000 Claims at 66 extended period of time, which makes the increase in $150,000 monthly benefits from postponing receipt more valu- Claims at 62 able (see Figure 1). That is, individuals with average $100,000 life expectancy of, say, 81 years will receive the same $50,000 lifetime benefits if they claim actuarially reduced bene- fits at 62 or full benefits four years later at 66. But $0 women at age 62 have a life expectancy that is about 62 66 70 74 78 82 86 90 94 98 three years longer than that for men. Therefore, more Expected Age of Death women than men are likely to live beyond the "break- Source: Authors’ calculations. even age" and would gain from postponing retirement past age 62. In other words, women can make up for *The calculations assume a PIA of $10,000 and a 3 percent real foregoing actuarially reduced benefits at ages 62-65 by discount rate. 2 These three different types of benefits are shown in TABLE 3. SINGLE WOMEN CLAIM LATER THAN MEN Figure 2 for a woman whose unreduced Social Percent Distribution of Initial Claiming of Social Security Security benefit equals 40 percent of her husband's. Benefits, 1992-2002 This example assumes that she and her husband are the same age, her husband will claim benefits at 65, she Age Women Men will live to 90, and he will die at 80. The wife can Married Single Married Single claim benefits from her own earnings history starting at age 62, although this will cause a permanent reduc- 62 67.1 48.9 58.1 64.1 tion in her own benefits. Once her husband retires, she 63 14.5 14.7 11.9 10.4 will be eligible for the 50 percent of her husband's benefit, which is reduced to reflect her early claim of 64 6.6 9.2 9.6 7.1 benefits. Once her husband dies, she will be entitled to 65 9.8 20.6 15.8 11.7 a survivor's benefit, which is mainly the continuation of her deceased husband's benefit. 66 and over 2.0 6.5 4.7 6.7 Two interesting insights emerge from the stylized pro- Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 file presented in Figure 2.7 First, from the wife's per- Source: Authors’ calculations from the Health and Retirement Study. spective, her decision as to when to claim does not affect the survivor's benefit. The survivor’s benefit is For single women, the pattern is as predicted. A sig- solely determined by her husband's earnings history nificantly smaller percentage of single women claim and the actuarial reduction or increase to reflect his benefits early than either married or single men. That early or delayed claiming. That is, from her perspec- makes sense. Women on average live longer than the tive, the survivor's benefit is a fixed amount to be "break-even" age, which means that they will enjoy the received after her husband's death. In order to maxi- higher benefits they gain from postponing retirement mize that fixed annual amount, she would like him to for enough additional years to more than make up for delay claiming. If the husband is trying to maximize foregoing benefits from ages 62-64. Thus, it is per- the benefits received by the couple, delay is also his fectly sensible that single women are less likely than choice. Ironically, in this example, when the husband men to claim benefits early. is deciding when to claim benefits, it is his wife's life expectancy, rather than his own, that is the determining The Claiming Behavior of Married consideration. Women

But what about married women? They are much more likely to claim benefits early than men. Are these FIGURE 2. STYLIZED SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFIT PROFILE FOR women acting irrationally or are they responding to the A MARRIED WOMAN incentives in the system? Benefits as a Percent of Her Husband’s Primary Insurance Amount (PIA) BENEFITS AVAILABLE FOR MARRIED WOMEN Married women are entitled to three types of benefits: 1) a benefit based on their own earnings record; 2) a 200% spouse's benefit equal to 50 percent of their husband's % 150 Own Spousal Survivor’s primary insurance amount — the benefit unreduced for Benefit Benefit Benefit early retirement — if that exceeds their own benefit; 100% and 3) a survivor's benefit equal to 100 percent of their 50% husband's actual benefit if that exceeds their own bene- fit (see Box). The percentages are reported at the nor- 0% mal retirement age, and are lower if the benefits are 62 66 70 74 78 82 86 90 94 98 claimed early. For example, a woman claiming the Age spouse's benefit at age 62 will receive only 35 percent of her husband's primary insurance amount rather than Authors’ calculations. the 50 percent payable at age 66. 3 BOX: SUPPLEMENTARY BENEFITS AVAILABLE TO MARRIED WOMEN

Married women are entitled to benefits derived from their own earnings. Early claimants receive reduced benefits according to the scheduled reductions in Table 1. In addition, married women can receive benefits from their spouse's earnings record and a survivor's benefit after their husband dies.

Spouse's Benefits After workers first claim benefits, their spouses are entitled to receive up to one half of the workers' PIA. The amount can be lower if the individual chooses to receive either her own benefit or the spouse's benefit before she reaches the normal retirement age (see Table B1). However, spouse's benefits are not affected by the age at which the worker-beneficiary claims benefits.

TABLE B1: SPOUSE’S BENEFITS AS A PERCENT OF THE HUSBAND’S PIA

Age Claiming Own/Spouse's Benefits at

62 65 66 67 70

62 in 1999 37.5 50.0 50.0 50.0 50.0

62 in 2005-2016 35.0 45.8 50.0 50.0 50.0

62 in 2022 32.5 41.7 45.8 50.0 50.0

Source: Authors’ calculations from the Social Security Retirement Planner (2005).

Survivor’s Benefits Spouses of deceased workers are entitled to Social Security survivor's benefits. The size of these benefits generally depends on the benefits received by the deceased worker — not the PIA — so the age at which the deceased worker first claimed benefits determines the size of the benefits to be received by his surviving spouse.8 A surviving spouse receives 100 percent of the worker's benefits if the survivor's benefits are claimed at or after the surviving spouse reaches full retirement age (see Table B2). Surviving spouses can claim bene- fits as early as age 60 (50 for disabled survivors), but early claims produce a reduction. Note that if the sur- viving spouse is receiving a spouse’s benefit, her benefits will automatically switch to the survivor's benefit.

TABLE B2: SURVIVOR’S BENEFITS AS A PERCENT OF THE DECEASED HUSBAND’S BENEFITS

Age Claiming Survivor's Benefits at

60 62 65 66 67 70

62 in 2001 71.5 82.9 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

62 in 2007-2018 71.5 81.0 95.3 100.0 100.0 100.0

62 in 2024 71.5 79.6 91.9 95.9 100.0 100.0

Source: Authors’ calculations from the Social Security Retirement Planner (2005).

4 Second, the decision over which the wife has control is In terms of the wife's decision, the optimal claiming when to claim the benefits she receives until the death age depends on her earnings relative to her husband's. of her husband. Her goal would be to maximize this If the wife's earnings produce a benefit equal to amount. Again, ironically, in this calculation her life between 40 and 100 percent of her husband's, she expectancy becomes irrelevant, and the relevant life should claim benefits as early as possible. The intu- expectancy is that of her husband. In this way, her ition is that once the woman reaches some moderate choice mirrors that facing a single man. Because these level of benefits, she maximizes the lifetime value of benefits are expected to be received for a period short- this component by claiming early because she receives er than the life expectancy of the average person, she these benefits only over the relatively short expected has an incentive to claim as soon as possible. lifetime of her husband. That is, her time frame for claiming her own benefits and her spouse's benefit is MAXIMIZING THE EXPECTED VALUE OF FUTURE BENEFITS the life expectancy of her husband. Once he dies, she If the main goal of married couples is to maximize the claims the survivor benefit, which is maximized by his expected present discounted value of Social Security claiming at age 69. About half of all married women benefits, the joint decision as to when to claim benefits fall into this category. depends on their relative PIAs and the age difference between the two.9 Table 4 shows the combination of The next category is where the wife's earnings produce ages at which married men and women should claim unreduced Social Security benefits equal to between 30 and 40 percent of her husband's. This group accounts benefits to maximize the expected present discounted for 10 percent of all married women. Again, optimiz- value of Social Security benefits.10 Consistent with the ing behavior requires that the husband defer retirement actuarial adjustment of Social Security, these calcula- for at least a year in order to maximize the survivor's tions use a 3 percent real discount rate. Mortality rates benefit. In terms of the wife's decision, if the age dif- are those for the 1948-cohort. ference is significant, she should elect to take benefits at the earliest possible age. Because she is so much The results suggest that men should in most cases younger than her husband, the span over which she can delay retirement until age 69.11 The intuition is that expect to receive her actuarially reduced small benefit the husband’s delay increases the value of the sur- based on her own earnings and her actuarially reduced vivor's benefits more than it reduces the man's own spouse's benefit is very short. In other words, for this benefit because of his lower life expectancy. decision, she is like a man with a very short life expectancy. At the other extreme, when the wife and TABLE 4. WIVES SHOULD GENERALLY CLAIM EARLY husband are the same age, the wife should wait until Optimal Ages (Male, Female) to Claim Social Security the Normal Retirement Age (here assumed to be 66). Benefits, by Relative Earnings and Age Difference The intuition is that the couple will spend most of the retirement period together, and the goal is to maximize Age Difference PIA of Wife as a Percent of Husband’s PIA the couple's benefit. By waiting, the wife will get 100 percent of her benefit and, more importantly, when her 0-30 30-40 40-100 husband retires the household will receive 158 percent of his PIA — 50 percent spousal benefit plus 108 per- 0 66,66 67,66 69,62 cent for his delayed retirement credit. 1 67,66 67,66 69,62 The final category is where the wife's PIA is less than 2 68,66 68,65 69,62 a third of the husband’s. In this case, the only mean- 3 68,65 69,62 69,62 ingful benefit is the spouse's benefit. For the wife to claim the spouse's benefit, her husband must retire. If 4 68,64 69,62 69,62 the age difference is significant, the husband should 5 68,62 69,62 69,62 defer until age 68 so that the wife will have the largest benefit for her expected extensive period as a survivor. 6 68,62 69,62 69,62 The wife again should claim as early as possible to Percent of 32.1 11.0 47.2 maximize the benefits over her husband's relatively Households short life expectancy. At the other extreme, if the hus- band and wife are the same age, they will spend most Source: Authors’ calculations.12 5 of their retirement together. In this case, the survivor's The fact that couples generally retire together rein- benefit becomes less important, so the husband should forces the incentives in the Social Security program for claim at the Normal Retirement Age, and the wife married women to withdraw from the labor force at should again claim as soon as possible. young ages.

In short, the foregoing analysis demonstrates that, in Conclusion most cases, the structure of Social Security benefits makes it advantageous for married women to claim The structure of Social Security benefits, combined benefits as early as possible. When they have mean- with the fact that husbands are generally a few years ingful earnings, they should claim at 62. When they older than their wives, helps explain the seemingly have virtually no earnings, they need to wait until their irrational decision by most women to retire early with husband retires to claim. But the incentives in the actuarially reduced monthly benefits. To the extent Social Security system clearly encourage early claim- that the availability of Social Security benefits causes ing by wives. The question, as always, is whether peo- women to withdraw from the labor force earlier than ple really undertake these detailed actuarial calcula- they would otherwise, they face a less secure retire- tions before they make decisions. Therefore, it is ment. The inadequacy of retirement income will worth considering an alternative or reinforcing factor become an increasingly serious problem in the future that may lead to women retiring early — namely, joint as replacement rates under Social Security decline and decision-making. retirees are forced increasingly to rely on accumula- tions in 401(k) plans as opposed to traditional defined JOINT DECISION-MAKING benefit plans. Reinforcing the incentives in the Social Security pro- gram is the fact that husbands and wives appear to coordinate their retirement. That is, married women facing the prospect of retirement are likely to coordi- nate their withdrawal from the labor force with that of their husband. To the extent that their husbands are generally older, women may face pressure to retire ear- lier than they would otherwise. Interestingly, Social Security's Earliest Eligibility Age of 62 was estab- lished in 1956 for women, primarily as a way for hus- bands and wives, who were presumed to be two to three years younger than their husbands, to claim bene- fits at the same time.13

A growing number of studies have examined how husbands and wives coordinate their retirement deci- sions.14 These studies show that spouses tend to retire at the same time, generally because they want to spend time together. That is, when husbands and wives view the tradeoff between the costs of foregone leisure and the benefits of increased income from paid employ- ment, they place greater weight on the leisure when they can spend it with their spouses.15 Economists have been unable to find any support for alternative hypotheses, such as husbands and wives have the same taste for work and leisure or that they face the same financial incentives.16

6 Endnotes 6 The Health and Retirement Study (HRS) is conduct- ed by the Institute for Social Research at the 1 Under current law, the procedure to calculate initial University of Michigan. The HRS is a nationally-rep- benefits involves four steps. First, a worker's previous resentative data set of about 12,650 individuals from earnings are restated in terms of today's wages by about 7,600 households. This study began in 1992 by indexing past earnings to wage growth. Second, earn- interviewing people ages 51-61 and their spouses ings for the highest 35 years are then averaged and (regardless of age). The survey has been re-adminis- divided by 12 to calculate Average Indexed Monthly tered every two years. For a detailed overview of the Earnings. Third, the Social Security benefit formula is survey, see Juster and Suzman (1995). applied to Average Indexed Monthly Earnings to yield the Primary Insurance Amount (PIA) — the benefit 7 In reality, the choices of the household are not as payable at the normal retirement age. Finally, benefits straightforward as this stylized example. First, the are adjusted to produce permanently lower benefits for year of death is unknown for both husband and wife, those who claim before the normal retirement age, and so married couples' choices of when to claim benefits higher benefits for those who delay retirement. depend on the probabilities assigned to various out- comes. These are properly modeled in Table 4. 2 Benefits are reduced by 5/9th of one percent for each Second, the figure shows the undiscounted real bene- month they are received prior to the normal retirement fits. Third, in the stylized example, the wive's benefit is age (NRA) up to 36 months and 5/12th of one percent determined solely by when her husband claims his for each month thereafter. This is equivalent to a 6.67 own benefits. This is true generally, with the notable percent reduction for the first three years prior to the exception being when the husband dies before she NRA and five percent thereafter. Remarkably, these reaches the Normal Retirement Age. reductions have remained close to actuarially fair despite of the changes in mortality and interest rates 8 Survivor's benefits can not be less than 82.5 percent (Jivan 2004). of the deceased worker PIA if these are claimed after the survivor reaches the NRA; if benefits are claimed 3 The NRA is scheduled to increase from age 65 to age before the survivor reaches the NRA, the minimum 67 by 2022. The increase began with individuals born benefit will be 71.5 percent of the husband's PIA. in 1938, for whom the NRA is 65 plus 2 months, and increases 2 months per year until it reaches age 66. 9 The analysis here assumes that households maxi- Then, after a 12-year hiatus, the NRA again increases mize the net present value of Social Security benefits. by 2 months per year until it reaches age 67 for indi- They could maximize social security wealth net of viduals born in 1960 or later. payroll taxes. For example, Diamond and Gruber (1999) estimate Social Security wealth at different ages 4 These numbers represent the age at which different net of any payroll taxes paid after age 55. Assuming a cohorts claim Social Security benefits. They should be delayed retirement credit of 5 percent, they find that interpreted as an approximation of the percent of indi- married couples have incentives to claim at age 64 and viduals of a given cohort claiming Social Security ben- estimate implied tax rates of around 50 percent for efits at a particular age. those that delay retirement after the Normal Retirement Age. 5 Using the scheduled actuarial reductions and delayed credits for individuals born between 1943 and 1958 — 10 For ease of exposition, these calculations assume the cohort for whom 66 will be the NRA— and a 3 that the PIA is unaffected by the age at which benefits percent real discount rate suggests a "break-even" age are claimed. In reality, if individuals delay retirement, of 81. The 1948 mortality tables project a life additional earnings would enter the PIA formula and expectancy at 62 equal to 80.0 for men and 82.6 for might increase the PIA. This means, for example, that women. With a 3 percent discount rate, men maximize the wife should take into consideration the expected the expected discounted present value of their own effect of an extra year of earnings on the ratio of PIA. Social Security benefits by claiming at age 62; women Then, the decision of the optimal age to claim benefits reach the maximum by claiming at age 68, although should be based on the expected PIA ratio. the gain from delaying retirement is less than 2 percent of Social Security wealth. 7 11 The fact that the optimal retirement age is 69 and 14 Blau (1998), using the Retirement History Survey, not 70 is likely to be the product of an imperfect actu- found that among 30 to 40 percent of married couples arial adjustment for delayed retirement. Our simula- the spouses left the labor force within a year of each tions conducted for single women show that with an 8 other. Hurd (1988), using the Social Security percent actuarial credit, the optimal age to retire should Administration's New Benefit Survey estimated that be 68, despite their longer life expectancies. See also among one quarter of couples the husband and wives Coile et al (2002). retired within one year of each other. Johnson and Favreault (2001), looking at married couples in the 12 Each of these claim-age combinations maximizes 1998 wave of the HRS, calculated that between 22 and the present discounted value of the expected benefits 40 percent of husbands and wives retired within two that the household receives after the husband reaches years of each other. age 62. The discounted rate is 3 percent real, and for mortality the calculations use SSA's 1948-cohort 15 Models estimated by Gustman and Steinmeier tables. The actuarial reductions and delayed credits (2000) and Hurd (1988) support the hypothesis that are those for the cohort 1943-1954 for the main earner husbands and wives view their own leisure and that of and spouse's benefit and 1945-1956 for survivors. The their spouse as complementary. Coile (2003), using percent of households was estimated using the HRS. the HRS, found that people not only respond to the The remainder (9.7 percent) of households are those financial incentives created by their own Social where the female PIA is higher than the male PIA. Security and employer-provided benefits, but also to Both members of the household are assumed to be spillover effects from their spouses' incentives. Coile alive with a probability of 1 until the husband reaches interpreted these results as an indication that spouses age 62. There are four possible outcomes: 1) are eager to coordinate their retirements. P(Husband Alive, Wife Alive), 2) P(Husband Alive, Wife Dead), 3) P(Husband Dead, Wife Alive), 4) 16 Hurd (1988) and Gustman and Steinmeier (2000). P(Husband Dead, Wife Dead). For outcomes one and two, the calculations follow the rules of the program. For outcome three, the survivor's benefit reduction given the husband's benefit is calculated as the weight- ed average of the reductions at each age combination before the wife reaches the NRA given the probability that the husband will die before that point. This expected reduction is then multiplied by the actuarial reduction applied to the husband's PIA because of his age of claiming to obtain the total survivor's reduction relative to the husband's PIA. All of these calculations were done using Microsoft Excel and are available upon request.

13 The Congressional Budget Office reports the fol- lowing: "According to Robert J. Myers, the Chief Actuary of the Social Security Administration from 1947 to 1970, the reduction in the earliest eligibility age for women in 1956 resulted from a "domino" effect: a desire to help widows under 65 and a desire to provide immediate spousal benefits to wives who were younger than their husbands resulted in pressure to reduce the eligibility ages for those types of benefits; then, it seemed unfair to require female workers to wait until a later age for benefits than female non- workers. The pressure to reduce the eligibility age for men in 1961 resulted from the high unemployment of that period (CBO, 1999)." 8 References Juster, F. Thomas and Richard Suzman. 1995. "An Overview of the Health and Retirement Study." Journal of Human Resources, Vol. 30, Supplement, pp. S7- Blau, David M. 1998. "Labor Force Dynamics of S56. Older Married Couples." Journal of Labor Economics 16: 595-629. U.S. Social Security Administration. 2005.Social Security Retirement Planner. Available at Coile, Courtney. 2003. "Retirement Incentives and http://www.ssa.gov/planners. Couples' Retirement Decisions." Working Paper No.4. Chestnut Hill, MA: Center for Retirement Research at U.S. Social Security Administration. 2005. Annual Boston College. Statistical Supplement, 2004. Available at: http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/supple- Coile, Courtney, Peter Diamond, Jonathan Gruber and ment/2004/supplement04.pdf Alan Jousten. 2002. "Delays in Claiming Social Security Benefits." Journal of Public Economics, U.S. Social Security Administration. 2005. The 2005 84(3), 357-386. Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Old Age and Survivors and Disability Insurance Trust Funds. Congressional Budget Office. 1999. Raising the Available at: Earliest Eligibility Age for Social Security Benefits. http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/TR05/tr05.pdf (January). Available at: http://www.cbo.gov/ftp- docs/10xx/doc1058/ssage.pdf University of Michigan. 1992-2002. Health and Retirement Study. Available at Diamond, Peter and Jonathan Gruber. 1999. "Social http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu Security and Retirement in the United States" in Jonathan Gruber and David A. Wise eds., Social Security and Retirement around the World. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Gustman, Alan and Thomas L. Steinmeier. 2000. "Retirement in a Family Context: A Structural Model for Husbands and Wives." Journal of Labor Economics 18: 503-45.

Hurd, Michael D. 1988. "The Joint Retirement Decision of Husbands and Wives." NBER Working Paper 2803. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.

Jivan, Natalia. 2004. “How Can the Actuarial Reducation for Social Security Early Retirement Be Right?” Just the Facts. No. 11. Chestnut Hill, MA.: Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

Johnson, Richard W. and Melissa M. Favreault. 2001. "Retiring Together or Working Alone: The Impact of Spousal Employment and Disability on Retirement Decisions." Working Paper No. 2001-01. Chestnut Hill, MA: Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

9 About the Center Affiliated Institutions The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College American Enterprise Institute was established in 1998 through a grant from the The Brookings Institution Social Security Administration. The Center's mission is Center for Strategic and International Studies to produce first-class research and forge a strong link Massachusetts Institute of Technology between the academic community and decisionmakers Syracuse University in the public and private sectors around an issue of Urban Institute critical importance to the nation's future. To achieve this mission, the Center sponsors a wide variety of Contact Information research projects, transmits new findings to a broad Center for Retirement Research audience, trains new scholars, and broadens access to Boston College valuable data sources. Since its inception, the Center Fulton Hall 550 has established a reputation as an authoritative source Chestnut Hill, MA 02467-3808 of information on all major aspects of the retirement Phone: (617) 552-1762 income debate. Fax: (617) 552-0191 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://www.bc.edu/crr

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